HISTORY ETHNOGRAPHY NATURE WINE-MAKING SITE MAP
Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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SIR SAMUEL WHITE BAKER
CYPRUS AS I SAW IT IN 1879
page 56

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general entourage delight in towns or villages, as they discover friends, or make acquaintances, and relieve the tedium of the journey ; therefore an antagonistic influence invariably exists upon the question of a camping-ground. It is accordingly most difficult to believe the statements of your interpreter : he may have old friends in a town to which you believe him to be a stranger ; he may have the remains of an old love, and a wish to meet again ; or he may have a still more powerful attraction in the remembrance of an agreeable café where he can refresh himself with liquor, revel in cigarettes, and play at dominoes. It is therefore necessary to be upon your guard when approaching a town, which should be looked upon as the enemy's camp. My amiable bullock-driver, the big Georgi, had always assured me that " game abounded in the immediate neighbourhood of Dali ; " of course I knew that the happy hunting-ground contained some special interest for himself. Upon arrival on the outskirts I ordered the vans to pass on the outside of the town, and I would seek a camping-place up-stream. Instead of this I was assured that we should pass through the town, and find a lovely grove of olive-trees by the river-side, the perfection of a halting-place. For the first time I now discovered that Georgi's wife and family lived in Dali, and that he was not such a fool as he looked. In a few minutes we were descending a lane so narrow that the gipsy van only cleared the walls of the houses on either side by three or four inches. This lane had been paved centuries ago with stones of all sizes, from a moderate grindstone to that of a football. When people had wished to build a new house, they had taken up a fe\v stones to make a

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